Neighbor Unto Him
by Mad Maudlin
Summary: Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that shewed mercy on him.


Neighbor Unto Him

by Mad Maudlin

It was just Draco Malfoy's luck that the forces of good and evil should choose to hold their climactic battle in his back garden. Well, to the extent that the large and scrubby heath could be associated with the rotten little cottage where he'd been hiding for over a year from both the Ministry and the Dark Lord. Perhaps Dumbledore's side might've given him better protection, if he thought for a moment that Potter and the others would trust him; instead his mother had given him gold and Snape had given him advice, and the two had left him to his own devices. The cottage was disgusting, but he had survived this long in it, alone but for the birds and vermin and his own paranoid thoughts.

But it was just Draco's luck that the battle had not caught him inside his miserable excuse for a home—miserable, but well-protected—where hiding in the root cellar with his fingers in his ears would've been a viable option. No, he had been walking—walking!—back from the tiny Muggle village on the other side of the heath where he did his shopping, carrying a few pounds' (or did Muggles call them keelows or something?) worth of bread, milk and tinned vegetables. He had even splurged on a tiny bar of chocolate. Snape had convinced him that an Unplottable hiding place was worth the inconvenience of no Apparation, but Draco had abruptly changed his mind on the subject when the first confusion of curses exploded around him. Though it wasn't as if he'd had enough time to Apparate before the full pitch of battle crashed down on him; he hadn't even had time to draw his wand.

Because it was just his luck that he'd been cursed to death in a war he'd been trying to avoid.

Oh, the curse wasn't immediately fatal; he could tell that much by the fact that he was still breathing, if rather painfully. He didn't recognize the exact curse and thought briefly that if he could only have a little more time he might like to look it up, just to know what killed him. If he had a little more time that that, he'd hunt down the bastard who cursed him and return the favor. He would have liked a lot more time, lots and lots more time, for lots of things, things he didn't even realize he wanted until he realized that he wasn't going to have time for any of them.

While he was still coming to grips with the pain in his guts and the blood oozing fitfully from the wound, somebody jumped into the same ditch where Draco had fallen upon being hexed. That someone fumbled with a Death Eater's mask, and Draco recognized him. "Nott?" he gasped.

Theodore Nott's head spun around and his wand went up; the other hand was still tangled in the mask. He relaxed when he saw who it was. "Malfoy? I thought you'd defected."

"I tried," Draco gasped. "Nott, help me—"

"No time for that now." Nott gave Draco a mad little smile—the same smile he'd seen countless times before at meals, in classes, in the Slytherin common room—before he finally got his mask to rights and pulled it over his face. "It's started, can't you see?"

"Of course I can," Draco said. He reached out with the hand that wasn't clutched over his belly. "Nott, please—I need to get out of here—"

"I've more important things to do, Malfoy," Nott said. He took a few deep breaths. "I'll send help after the battle, all right? Though the Dark Lord will most likely just kill you anyway."

"Nott, please—"

Nott charged out of the ditch. From Draco's point of observation, he could see Nott's arm wave in textbook-perfect form as he loosed one, two, three savage hexes. He then toppled back into the ditch after a Killing Curse lit up the sky.

"You stupid bastard," Draco said to the corpse.

-/--/--/-

The battle seemed to go on for hours, or perhaps the climbing pain distorted Draco's sense of time. The bleeding from his stomach was getting heavier, and his feet and fingers were started to tingle in a way he didn't like at all. He managed to drag himself over to Nott's corpse, which made for a surprisingly good conversation partner under the circumstances.

"Do you know how I differ from you, Nott?" Draco said. "Aside from being alive and so forth. That'll be fixed shortly. We're different because you _bought it._ You bought _into_ it. You really believed that the Dark Lord was going to reward his followers with eternal life. Whereas I was just trying to make my father proud."

He paused here to catch his breath. Nott remained dead.

"I didn't care about the eternal life business. I don't think I'd really want to live forever anyway. It sounds quite boring if you really consider it. But, you know, even though I don't care about it—he wasn't going to give it to you anyway. I worked that one out myself and I feel you should know. He's not going to give out eternal life like a Christmas cracker. He doesn't want the competition."

Draco made another long pause, during which someone else crashed into his ditch. (He had begun to think of it as "his ditch," since he was the one dying in it, though in fact for all he knew it was property of the Queen.) The newest ditch crashee was an unfamiliar man dressed in an Auror's robe, and he was so intent on the battle before him that he didn't noticed Draco until Draco's attempt to say hello turned into an agonized coughing fit.

He found himself staring down the length of another wand. "I'm not going to hurt you," Draco said hoarsely, "as that would require the ability to stand."

"What are you doing here?" The Auror said. He was old enough to have whorls of gray in his hair and a small, puffy scar on his jaw.

"Dying," Draco said, "couldn't you tell?"

The Auror's eyes scanned from his face to his stomach, where the blood was becoming obvious through his Muggle shirt. Then they flicked back to his face again. "Are you Lucius Malfoy's son?"

"Are you going to help me if I am?" Draco asked.

The Auror hesitate a moment, then said, "If that's a yes, then you're better off dead." He crawled a few yards up the ditch before jumping out, and Draco didn't see him again.

-/--/--/-

So he kept talking to Nott, even as his feet began to go numb.

"You died for eternal life, which is bitterly ironic in its own right, especially since you weren't going to get it." Breathe. "But that's not the point I was trying to make." Breathe. "I wanted to tell you that I never cared about it. The living forever. Nor the purification of the wizarding race." Breathe. "And I realized that what I cared about wasn't worth killing for."

He coughed again, and this time he tasted blood. He was also very cold. "That's not very Slytherin of me, I suppose," he said, and coughed again. "But the truth is—" Breathe. "The truth is, and I've been thinking about this, we've all got something we wouldn't do. A weakness. A line." Breathe. "We've got lines, Nott, and I discovered what it meant to cross one." Breathe. "I think the only person without a line is the Dark Lord, actually." Breathe. "And that's what makes him mighty. And a threat."

Nott did not reply, naturally, but Draco heard someone running up his ditch; he struggled to raise his body enough to see them, but it was too painful. The someone paused not far from him, and gave a little shriek when he managed to croak out "Hello."

A face swung into view, a face in a mask. Then the mask was pulled back and good Lord, he was looking at Pansy. She was dusty and bloodied and deathly pale, but she was Pansy and she was staring at him like he was a ghost. Which he felt he might become at any moment. "Draco?" she gasped. "Is that really you?"

"No," he said, "I'm a figment of your—" Breathe—"your imagination."

She covered her mouth with her hand and peeked over the lip of the ditch. "I have to go," she groaned.

"Help me," Draco said. "Get me out of here."

"I can't."

"You can Apparate—"

"I _can't,_" she nearly wailed. "Something's happened—your aunt tried to Apparate a little while ago and got splinched so badly—there's a spell or something—"

"Pansy, please," Draco said again. He dimly recalled that the last time he'd said those words the topic of conversation had been her left breast and where his hand was allowed in relation to it. "Please—I'm dying—"

She looked like she was going to cry. "I've made a terrible mistake," she said.

"You're not the only one." Breathe. "Please."

Pansy peered over the edge of the ditch again and gave another little cry. Then she crouched over Draco and pointed her wand. "I'm so sorry," she said. "I have to get out of here."

"Don't leave me," he whispered, knowing she would.

She pointed her wand at him and whispered, _"Eleison,"_ before she left.

-/--/--/-

The charm was enough to blunt the pain for a while, and Draco even slept a bit, possibly. At least, he could breath easier, and Nott talked back a bit.

_"Shouldn't we try to emulate the Dark Lord?" Nott asked. "Shouldn't we try to be as mighty as he?"_

_"You don't get it," Draco said, "He's too dangerous to be allowed. If there's nothing he won't do, how can we be safe?"_

_"We can be safe by being on his side."_

_"Yes," Draco said, "you look very safe from here. As does your father. As does mine."_

_"I'll kindly ask you to keep my father out of this."_

_"Look, Nott," Draco said, and even rolled over a little, because his body was curiously light. "This is how the world works. I've been _thinking _about this."_

_"Really? Congratulations."_

_"Shut up and listen." This, Draco remembered, was why they had never gotten along in school. If people weren't impressed with him, he liked them to keep it to themselves. "I've worked this out, Nott. As long as a wizard has his weakness, his line, you know where he stands and where you stand in relation. As long as you have a line you are safe, because you can be controlled."_

_"Like the Dark Lord controlled you?"_

_A year ago it might've been an insult, but Draco has had too much time to think, and anyway he supposes that this Nott is just a figment of his imagination anyway. "Yes," he said. "Like the Dark Lord controlled us."_

_"So why is it good to be controlled?"_

_"It's good to have a limit. Because then you are safe. The Dark Lord is dangerous because there's nearly no limit to what he can do and no limit to what he'll try. And that's why he _has _to be destroyed. To make things safe for the rest of us."_

_"Why the 'nearly' on the 'no limit' for 'can'?" Nott asked._

_"Well, for one thing, he does seem to have a spot of trouble killing Harry Potter," Draco said. "Or have I missed something? I've been out of touch."_

_"How should I know?" Nott said. "I'm a figment of your imagination."_

_"They why are you arguing with me?"_

_"Because it's getting incredibly boring waiting to die."_

-/--/--/-

A new kind of pain woke him up and banished the last traces of the charm. His legs were completely numb and his lungs felt full and crushed and his stomach was still leaking all over the ground, but for a few bright seconds all that paled in comparison to the pain in his left arm, a pain so intense and precise that he could almost feel the pattern. When it subsided to an ache he managed to feel for the wound: it couldn't bear the slightest pressure, but he didn't feel blood. Small favors, that.

The sky was streaked with sunset and he was fairly certain he was going to die soon. He was too cold and too weak and he'd lost too much blood. Pity he couldn't have stayed asleep for it. Flies were buzzing around Nott's corpse, and a couple of them landed on his blood-soaked shirt and started to feed. "Fuck off," he whispered. "'m still alive."

"Hello?"

The sounds of battle had gone, and the voice that called over the ditch rang clearly in the cooling air. For a moment Draco was not certain it wasn't another hallucination brought on by blood loss and pain, until he heard it again—"Hello? Anyone down there?"

Draco struggled to draw the deepest breath he could, but his breath still came out barely louder that a whisper. "Help me."

"Hello?"

_"Help me."_

A shape appeared over the top rim of the ditch, the head and shoulders of a wizard with an upraised wand, outlined against the fiery sky. For a moment there was no reaction, and Draco struggled to move, to somehow catch his rescuer's attention—

"Malfoy?" the wizard above asked incredulously.

Draco recognized the voice, and let himself flop back into the mud. "On second thought," breathe, "piss off."

Ronald Weasley did not piss off. He jumped down into the ditch a few feet away from Draco and approached with his wand up. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Isn't it," breath, "obvious?"

"I mean, which side are you on?"

"No one's."

"What?"

Draco summoned reserves of strength he didn't know he had. "If you're just going to ask inane questions," he wheezed, "then piss off and let me die in peace."

"It's as much as you deserve," Weasley said, but somehow his heart wasn't in it.

"Good to know," Draco said.

"My brother nearly died because of you. Dumbledore did die because of you."

"Sorry."

Weasley swore and started to walk away—Draco was still coherent enough to notice a bit of a limp in his step. He shut his eyes and waited for the last gasp, the last cough, the last heartbeat before his end Instead the next thing he felt was a rough, slick hand wrenching his left arm back, away from the place where the curse originally hit him. He opened his eyes to see Weasley crouching over him, wand held in his teeth.

Draco had no choice but to let Weasley push up his sleeve to reveal the raw blister where the Dark Mark had once been. Weasley snorted, and Draco assumed that it was this was it, then, nothing left but the shout. But then Weasley saw the curse mark through the puddle of blood on Draco's abdomen, and if he hadn't been so badly sunburned Draco thought he face might've gone white. They held that pose for the length of three of Draco's gurgling breaths, before Weasley swore again and stood up. He then did the last thing Draco expected: he flicked his wand and muttered, _"Leviosa."_

Draco felt his body rise up, lighter than air. His attempt to ask what the hell Weasley thought he was doing dissolved into painful coughing, and by the time the fit had subsided he was resting on dry grass above his ditch, and Weasley was prodding the curse mark with his wand. "What the hell?" Draco asked.

"Shut up," Weasley snapped, then contradicted himself and asked, "What kind of a curse is this?"

"Dunno." The prodding didn't actually hurt, probably because Draco was mostly numb below the waist; in fact, the only part that really hurt now was his arm, and sometimes his chest, when he coughed. And even that faded when Weasley cast another pain-relief charm over him, faded into a background hum on his senses and made his thoughts seem suddenly clear. "What are you doing?"

"Not really sure myself," Weasley muttered, adjusting his grip on his wand. He stared at Draco for several moments, practically cross-eyed, then grit his teeth and flicked a charm over him.

The full, gurgly feeling in Draco's lungs suddenly subsided. He struggled to take a few deep breaths and coughed again, but without the taste of blood. Weasley cast the charm again, and again, and on the third repeat Draco thought he was regaining some feeling in his legs. Weasley sighed after that, then slung a patched and grubby rucksack off his shoulder and rooted out a small, crystal bottle with a small amount of deep red potion in the bottom. He sniffed it dubiously, then held it over Draco's mouth. "Swallow this."

"What is it?"

"Blood-replenishing potion."

Weasley didn't give Draco more of a choice; he tipped the bottle up, and the last drops it contained dribbled over Draco's lips and tongue. He licked them up as best he could, feeling some of his light-headedness dissipate further. Weasley tossed the empty vial away and from the pack dug out a couple of grimy white t-shirts, with which he began to dress Draco's stomach as best he could.

It was all deeply confusing to Draco, and a little suspicious, but the dim possibility that he might not die alone in the mud blotted out many of his more practical instincts. "Thank you," he said as Weasley knotted off the makeshift bandages.

Weasley blinked at him, then shook his head. "Thank Hermione," he said.

"Where are they, anyway? Potter and Granger?"

"Don't know." Weasley sat back and stretched out one of his legs, prodding gingerly around his knee. "We...we got split up. They're who I was looking for. Don't reckon I'll find anyone else in the dark, though, and I have no idea why I'm telling you any of this."

Draco watched silently for a moment as Weasley stretched his leg a bit, wincing badly. "Why are you doing this?"

"Think I sprained something."

"I mean me, you idiot."

Weasley scowled, but folded his leg back in. "Sorry, did you want your guts to melt down there? I didn't mean to interrupt."

Draco sighed and turned his head away, to where the sinking sun painted the smoky battlefield with copper and blood. "Never mind."

After a moment, though, Weasley said softly, "Harry said you weren't that bad. Didn't really believe him, but...I reckon the Ministry can always kill you later, or not, or whatever."


End file.
